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eewiz
"The strong growth was driven sequentially by Infineon's Wireless and Industrial ...
fabsurplus.com
It is encouraging to see capital equipment capex picking up in Europe as well as ...
Infineon boosts profits, outlook, capex
Peter Clarke
7/28/2010 7:29 AM EDT
LONDON —German chip vendor Infineon Technologies AG beat analysts' expectations as it made a net income of 126 million euro (about $164 million) on revenues of 1,209 million euro (about $1.57 billion) in its fiscal third quarter, ended June 30, 2010.
The net profit was up from 79 million euro (about $100 million) in the second quarter and a loss of 23 million euro (about $30 million) in the same quarter a year before. The revenue was up 59 percent year-on-year and 17 percent sequentially and the results prompted Infineon to raise its guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter and its financial year.
The strong growth was driven sequentially by Infineon's Wireless and Industrial & Multimarket (IMM) divisions, the company said. "After a challenging 2009 fiscal year, we are executing extremely well in the current up-cycle. We have come a long way in improving profitability," said CEO Peter Bauer, in a statement.
For the fourth quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, Infineon said it now expects a high single-digit percentage increase in revenues. Given the results for the first nine months and the outlook for the fourth quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, Infineon is now anticipating revenue growth for the 2010 fiscal year compared to the 2009 fiscal year to be a mid to high 40s percentage, up from a high 30s percentage in the previous outlook.
The company said it would also be increasing its investments for the year to more than 400 million euro (about $520 million), up from an earlier guidance of more than 300 million euro (about $390 million).
Related links and articles:
www.infineon.com
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alan.varghese
7/28/2010 10:31 AM EDT
Infineon's Wireless segment was the key reason; this segment contributes about 29% of overall revenue, and had 30% growth from the prior quarter. The company has enjoyed the growth in mobile in the emerging regions and Ultra Low Cost handsets; with their strengths in both RF and Baseband, they were one of the first to offer high levels of RF-Baseband integration and meet the requirements of low BOM for ULC. And they've also enjoyed the uptick in the high-end due to high growth in smartphones; their chipset is the one used by Apple for the iPhone sold into AT&T.
There is a grey cloud - Verizon has plans to offer the iPhone, and if so it may not be Infineon that benefits - it may be Qualcomm since theirs is the only chipset that can connect to Verizon's CDMA network. If that happens, the question becomes - will Apple have a dual chipset supplier strategy, or will they move completely over to Qualcomm - including for their AT&T solution? The decision is complex; you have to weigh single-source supply risks and loss in pricing leverage AGAINST lower design costs and engineering simplicity.
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fabsurplus.com
7/28/2010 12:37 PM EDT
It is encouraging to see capital equipment capex picking up in Europe as well as the USA.
Infineon is an important partner for us and the rest of the semiconductor equipment supply infrastructure in Europe.
Stephen Howe
(owner)
www.fabsurplus.com
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eewiz
7/28/2010 4:12 PM EDT
"The strong growth was driven sequentially by Infineon's Wireless and Industrial & Multimarket (IMM) divisions" I am a bit confused; There were rumors about infineon planning to sell the wireless division to Intel similar to the Nokia-Renesas deal. And talks about infineon being a tier 2 wireless supplier. But based on the company statement wireless division performed well recently. So in that case why would they want to sell the business?
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